Raised Again!

The public press joined the clergy in vilifying God's people, one paper saying: "The finis of The Finished Mystery has been given." Nothing, though, could have been further from the truth! The two witnesses did not stay dead. We read: " And after the three and a half days spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell upon those beholding them. And they heard a loud voice out of heaven say to them: 'Come on up here.' And they went up into heaven in a cloud, and their enemies beheld them." (Revelation 11:11, 12) Thus, they had an experience similar to that of the dry bones in the valley that Ezekiel visited in vision. Jehovah breathed upon those dry bones, and they came to life, providing a picture of the rebirth of the nation of Israel after 70 years of captivity in Babylon. (Ezekiel 37:1-14) These two prophecies in Ezekiel and in Revelation, had their striking modern-day fulfillment in 1919, when Jehovah restored his "deceased"witnesses to vibrant life.

What a shock for those persecutors! The corpses of the two witnesses were suddenly alive and active again. it was a bitter pill for those clergymen to swallow, the more so since the Christian ministers whom they has schemed to put in prison were free again, later to be fully exonerated. The shock must have been even greater when, in September 1919, the Bible Students held a convention in Cedar Point, Ohio, U.S.A. Here the recently released president of the Watchtower Society, J.F. Rutherford, stirred conventioneers with his talk "announcing the Kingdom," based on Revelation 15:2 and Isaiah 52:7. Those of the John class began once again to "prophesy," or preachy publicly. They advanced from strength to strength, fearlessly exposing Christendom's hypocrisy.

Christendom tried again and again to repeat her triumph of 1918. She resorted to mob action, legal maneuvering, imprisonment, even executions-all to no avail! After 1919 the spiritual domain of the two witnesses was out of her reach. In that year Jehovah had said to them: "Come on up here," and they had ascended to an elevated spiritual state where their enemies could see them but could not touch them. John describes the shocking effect their restoration had on the great city: "And in that hour a great earthquake occurred, and a tenth of the city fell; and seven thousand persons were killed by the earthquake, and the rest became frightened and gave glory to the God of heaven." (Revelation 11:13) There were truly great convulsions in the realm of religion. The ground seemed to move under the leaders of the established churches as this body of revived Christians got to work. One tenth of their city, figuratively 7,000 persons, were so profoundly affected that they are spoken of as being killed.

Next time: Continue with Raised Again!